I, too, decry the US tort system that awards billions just for 'failure to warn", even though NO evidence of harm from Roundup was found. If the future US builds a thousand nuclear power reactors there will be accidents with radiation releases. Perfection is impossible. Radiation harm to health will be very unlikely, as shown at Fukushima. To provide low-cost, ample nuclear power we must educate citizens and legislators about radiation effects and limit compensation to real harm. More at https://hargraves.substack.com/i/176322713/accident-insurance
Why does an alternate radiation harm model have to be perfect? The ruling model is so flawed you can write a book about it - and you basically did.
No scientist with any professional integrity would claim that radiation effects are linear and that dose rate doesn't matter, while accepting and using fudge factors such as DDREF. Dose rate rate doesn't matter, if we apply this here fudge factor to correct for it. Really, 1+1=20 if we apply a factor of 10 correction over it. Riiiight. A toddler can see the flaws in the argument yet we have entire scientific committees, regulators and businesses that continue to cling to LNT.
LNT-ers set out to prove that the effects must be linear, so they will apply fudge factors and arbitrary binning and various statistical techniques of tomfoolery to obfuscate and bebother. Even then often the correlation is so poor that it must be rejected, so they will - radiation effects are linear so any study that shows they aren't is rejected to prove that it is.
LNT is politically motivated. It is not about real science.
As to the common man and woman, they are not interested in word smithing or the umpteenth decimal. That comes across as lawyer-esque, desperately trying to defend something bad. Scientists think in terms of probabilities but not Jane the housewife. She just wants to know, are my children safe. I like to use the term 'harmless'. A single drop of wine could cause cancer, but any normal person knows that a drop of wine is harmless. We know that radiation doses on order of 1 or 2 mSv per day are harmless, even when sustained indefinitely. Parents be comforted.
Yeah, it would be nice to just be able to say such and such dose rate profile is harmless. For many dose rate profiles that statement would not be misleading in a practical sense. But I don't think we have that luxury. We have to get rid of LNT. I don't see any hope of doing that without a replacement.
The Trump transition team wanted to outlaw LNT. Their effort stalled in large part because they did not have a replacement. Suppose at the time they had a well defined model and a statement signed by a group of people with credentials (eg SARI) supporting that model. I think the anti-LNTers would have prevailed.
So while we blather endlessly about do we really need a model, and can't we say there is no harm up to some poorly defined threshold, any opportunities are blown.
In my opinion any model that claims a threshold is a non-starter as a replacement. Unless you bring in hormesis, the claim is logically false, and the LNTer's will jump all over that falsehood. I don't think hormesis is sellable, in part because there is little or no evidence hormesis would play a significant role in a NPP release. This shows up in the failure of the hormetians to produce a well defined model.
The tragedy is SNT is good enough. If SNT replaced LNT, the policy implications would be transformative. See the We can Make Nuclear Cheap Again book. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F32KLXRJ
Yes, we would have to patiently explain the risk; but people are not as stupid as you imply. With time, we can do it. But first we need to get rid of LNT.
I think that the problem is the words that are being used. "Safe" is the problem, and it should be replaced with the word "tolerable". We have been torturing the word "safe" since the early 1960s, when Ralph Nader published the book "Unsafe at any speed", and applying it to as many concepts as we can identify to prevent those concepts from being turned into reality.
But there is NOTHING in life that is inherently "safe". And no one can prove that anything is truly "safe", and cannot cause any harm. We can demonstrate that something is unsafe, by providing specific examples of what could go wrong, and what the consequences might be, but then the question of safety becomes "How safe is safe enough?" or "How unsafe is too unsafe?"
I propose that we change the language to use the word tolerable, so that we can talk about whether the risk, and therefore the potential harm of some concept is acceptable to society. We accept many risks in life, starting with birth itself, and including everything that humans make or do. Everything carries with it a calculable risk of human harm. The question is whether we consider that that risk is tolerable to society, given the benefits from the issue under consideration.
Many people wave this away as an "risk-benefit" assessment, which they consider inherently evil because it puts a value on human life. But we make these assessments every day, often many times every day, in our ordinary course of life. We must do this, or else we end up staying in bed, with the covers pulled over our heads, fearful of the entire world. And, of course, staying in bed carries with it its own risks, from starving to death or not getting enough exercise that our bodies atrophy. One can calculate these risks and attach a number to them, even though the vast majority of them are inherently trivial, uncertain, and inconsequential.
With radiation exposure we need to consider whether the exposure to ionizing radiation beyond what occurs "naturally" is worth the risk of genetic harm. No one is going to make an argument that exposure to "naturally occuring radiation doses" or dose rates is going to cause acute illness, and the increase from sources like nuclear power plants is MUCH lower than other manmade exposure.
It has been calculated that about half of the average radiation exposure to humans living now comes from radiation used in medical diagnoses. Another large slice of radiation exposure comes from the building materials used and the locations where we erect houses and other buildings. Yet another not-insignificant slice of exposure comes from flying around the planet at 40,000 feet, from cosmic rays. In almost all of these situations, the society has decided that the doses are tolerable, compared to the benefits we receive. The only one I can think of that is not tolerated is radon exposure from building sites where radon comes out of the water or the ground and accumulates in homes. In these cases, we try to remediate the exposure by ventilating the home or sealing basement floors or venting water supplies. But in no case do we propose to stop building homes on ground that is a large source of radon. We do not propose o evacuate Denver Colorado or other towns at high elevations which receive significantly higher doses from cosmic rays. We do not propose that airplanes be shielded from cosmic rays, either - they would not be able to fly if that was proposed.
So, when it comes to exposures from nuclear plants, including accidents which release radioactive materials, the exposure to the radiation from those releases should not be judged based on the concept that "there is no safe level of radiation", but "is the dose to the public from this exposure tolerable to society". This is a political decision. It has become political because the people who push the inherent danger of radiation exposure do not want people to understand the concept of risk or get used to the idea that small exposures do not cause any amount of harm that would be measureable or detectable.
I suggest, again, we need to stop using the word safe. Nothing in life is "safe". There are risks everywhere, and we have to agree about how much risk from any activity is "tolerable".
One other aspect of this is the radioactive releases from operating nuclear plants that are acknowledged and approved. If you read the actual licenses for the operating reactors in the USA, you will find mention of the amount of radioactive material that is legally allowed to be released to the air and to the water that is discharged from the plants. These allowances have been there since the very first plants started up, because it was realized that the plants could not operate if they had to contain everything. So, there is already a tolerability limit for radiation releases. The Navy nuclear submarines in Groton Ct. used to be able to detect it, from the Millstone plants just down the coast.
I, too, decry the US tort system that awards billions just for 'failure to warn", even though NO evidence of harm from Roundup was found. If the future US builds a thousand nuclear power reactors there will be accidents with radiation releases. Perfection is impossible. Radiation harm to health will be very unlikely, as shown at Fukushima. To provide low-cost, ample nuclear power we must educate citizens and legislators about radiation effects and limit compensation to real harm. More at https://hargraves.substack.com/i/176322713/accident-insurance
Why does an alternate radiation harm model have to be perfect? The ruling model is so flawed you can write a book about it - and you basically did.
No scientist with any professional integrity would claim that radiation effects are linear and that dose rate doesn't matter, while accepting and using fudge factors such as DDREF. Dose rate rate doesn't matter, if we apply this here fudge factor to correct for it. Really, 1+1=20 if we apply a factor of 10 correction over it. Riiiight. A toddler can see the flaws in the argument yet we have entire scientific committees, regulators and businesses that continue to cling to LNT.
LNT-ers set out to prove that the effects must be linear, so they will apply fudge factors and arbitrary binning and various statistical techniques of tomfoolery to obfuscate and bebother. Even then often the correlation is so poor that it must be rejected, so they will - radiation effects are linear so any study that shows they aren't is rejected to prove that it is.
LNT is politically motivated. It is not about real science.
As to the common man and woman, they are not interested in word smithing or the umpteenth decimal. That comes across as lawyer-esque, desperately trying to defend something bad. Scientists think in terms of probabilities but not Jane the housewife. She just wants to know, are my children safe. I like to use the term 'harmless'. A single drop of wine could cause cancer, but any normal person knows that a drop of wine is harmless. We know that radiation doses on order of 1 or 2 mSv per day are harmless, even when sustained indefinitely. Parents be comforted.
>No scientist with any professional integrity would claim that radiation effects are linear
But they would if they want tenure in today's environment, IMO.
Yeah, it would be nice to just be able to say such and such dose rate profile is harmless. For many dose rate profiles that statement would not be misleading in a practical sense. But I don't think we have that luxury. We have to get rid of LNT. I don't see any hope of doing that without a replacement.
The Trump transition team wanted to outlaw LNT. Their effort stalled in large part because they did not have a replacement. Suppose at the time they had a well defined model and a statement signed by a group of people with credentials (eg SARI) supporting that model. I think the anti-LNTers would have prevailed.
So while we blather endlessly about do we really need a model, and can't we say there is no harm up to some poorly defined threshold, any opportunities are blown.
In my opinion any model that claims a threshold is a non-starter as a replacement. Unless you bring in hormesis, the claim is logically false, and the LNTer's will jump all over that falsehood. I don't think hormesis is sellable, in part because there is little or no evidence hormesis would play a significant role in a NPP release. This shows up in the failure of the hormetians to produce a well defined model.
The tragedy is SNT is good enough. If SNT replaced LNT, the policy implications would be transformative. See the We can Make Nuclear Cheap Again book. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F32KLXRJ
Yes, we would have to patiently explain the risk; but people are not as stupid as you imply. With time, we can do it. But first we need to get rid of LNT.
I think that the problem is the words that are being used. "Safe" is the problem, and it should be replaced with the word "tolerable". We have been torturing the word "safe" since the early 1960s, when Ralph Nader published the book "Unsafe at any speed", and applying it to as many concepts as we can identify to prevent those concepts from being turned into reality.
But there is NOTHING in life that is inherently "safe". And no one can prove that anything is truly "safe", and cannot cause any harm. We can demonstrate that something is unsafe, by providing specific examples of what could go wrong, and what the consequences might be, but then the question of safety becomes "How safe is safe enough?" or "How unsafe is too unsafe?"
I propose that we change the language to use the word tolerable, so that we can talk about whether the risk, and therefore the potential harm of some concept is acceptable to society. We accept many risks in life, starting with birth itself, and including everything that humans make or do. Everything carries with it a calculable risk of human harm. The question is whether we consider that that risk is tolerable to society, given the benefits from the issue under consideration.
Many people wave this away as an "risk-benefit" assessment, which they consider inherently evil because it puts a value on human life. But we make these assessments every day, often many times every day, in our ordinary course of life. We must do this, or else we end up staying in bed, with the covers pulled over our heads, fearful of the entire world. And, of course, staying in bed carries with it its own risks, from starving to death or not getting enough exercise that our bodies atrophy. One can calculate these risks and attach a number to them, even though the vast majority of them are inherently trivial, uncertain, and inconsequential.
With radiation exposure we need to consider whether the exposure to ionizing radiation beyond what occurs "naturally" is worth the risk of genetic harm. No one is going to make an argument that exposure to "naturally occuring radiation doses" or dose rates is going to cause acute illness, and the increase from sources like nuclear power plants is MUCH lower than other manmade exposure.
It has been calculated that about half of the average radiation exposure to humans living now comes from radiation used in medical diagnoses. Another large slice of radiation exposure comes from the building materials used and the locations where we erect houses and other buildings. Yet another not-insignificant slice of exposure comes from flying around the planet at 40,000 feet, from cosmic rays. In almost all of these situations, the society has decided that the doses are tolerable, compared to the benefits we receive. The only one I can think of that is not tolerated is radon exposure from building sites where radon comes out of the water or the ground and accumulates in homes. In these cases, we try to remediate the exposure by ventilating the home or sealing basement floors or venting water supplies. But in no case do we propose to stop building homes on ground that is a large source of radon. We do not propose o evacuate Denver Colorado or other towns at high elevations which receive significantly higher doses from cosmic rays. We do not propose that airplanes be shielded from cosmic rays, either - they would not be able to fly if that was proposed.
So, when it comes to exposures from nuclear plants, including accidents which release radioactive materials, the exposure to the radiation from those releases should not be judged based on the concept that "there is no safe level of radiation", but "is the dose to the public from this exposure tolerable to society". This is a political decision. It has become political because the people who push the inherent danger of radiation exposure do not want people to understand the concept of risk or get used to the idea that small exposures do not cause any amount of harm that would be measureable or detectable.
I suggest, again, we need to stop using the word safe. Nothing in life is "safe". There are risks everywhere, and we have to agree about how much risk from any activity is "tolerable".
One other aspect of this is the radioactive releases from operating nuclear plants that are acknowledged and approved. If you read the actual licenses for the operating reactors in the USA, you will find mention of the amount of radioactive material that is legally allowed to be released to the air and to the water that is discharged from the plants. These allowances have been there since the very first plants started up, because it was realized that the plants could not operate if they had to contain everything. So, there is already a tolerability limit for radiation releases. The Navy nuclear submarines in Groton Ct. used to be able to detect it, from the Millstone plants just down the coast.